


Sun-Warmed Stones

by letmetellyouaboutmyfeels



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Prompt, Turtles in Love, soft fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:41:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23088724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letmetellyouaboutmyfeels/pseuds/letmetellyouaboutmyfeels
Summary: It's time to take off the faces and show the masks.
Relationships: Garcia Flynn/Lucy Preston
Comments: 2
Kudos: 43





	Sun-Warmed Stones

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted here: https://letmetellyouaboutmyfeels.tumblr.com/post/190189208178/can-you-do-33-garcy-pls

_“Tear off the mask. Your face is glorious.”_

Flynn found her reading on the couch again.

She was always up late at night, reading, studying, making notes. Trying to stay a step ahead of the enemy. Flynn understood. He had been the same for years, poring over her journal, getting ready to steal the Lifeboat, and then afterwards, trying to stay ahead of Rittenhouse and the Time Team. Trying to keep ahead of her.

“Lucy.”

She looked up, saw the hot coco in his hand, and smiled. She was smiling at him more and more recently, and he coveted each one, like shiny pebbles he’d collected as a child and kept in a small cedar box on top of his dresser. “What, no coffee?”

“Not this time.” She didn’t need more caffeine. She needed to sleep.

He passed her the hot coco and settled on the far end of the couch, watching as she sipped it with one hand and flipped through a book with the other. Lucy clung to her independence, her sense of self, and now that he knew about her mother he understood why. And being in this bunker would drive anyone to fiercely carve out what individuality they could, when the rest of their life was no longer theirs. But he did wish that she would let herself be taken care of, sometimes. She was always so busy taking care of everyone else.

“How are you doing?” he asked. Things had been… interesting, lately, to say the least. Saving Rufus, and dealing with the wibbly-wobbly ball of timey-wimey nonsense that had resulted. Dealing with Rittenhouse now that Emma was in charge. Dealing with a Jessica who might or might not be defecting to their side and Wyatt’s understandable near-constant panic over the whole situation. Not that Flynn had too much sympathy, but he’d been a father once. He could relate.

_You say you can’t be a father again but you can! You can!_

Lucy sipped at her coco. “Oh. I’m fine. Tired, but so’s everyone.”

Flynn glanced around the empty space. “I don’t see anyone else up this late.”

“Rufus and Jiya might be up.”

“What Rufus and Jiya do in bed is very different from what you’re doing right now.” For one thing, more endorphins. For another, less stress.

Lucy made a note in her book. “Someone has to do this.”

“But it doesn’t always have to be you, and it doesn’t have to be all the time.”

Lucy looked up at him through her lashes, a move that he would have called coquettish if her gaze hadn’t been so piercing. “You don’t have to look out for me.”

“You’re right,” he conceded. “But someone has to. Anytime someone else wants to step up and do it they can let me know. But last I checked, everyone was a bit too fine with letting you do all the heavy historical lifting.”

“That’s not fair.” Lucy closed the book. “Rufus was dead, Jiya was trapped in the past, Wyatt–”

“Don’t talk to me,” Flynn said quietly, “about what the others are going through. We’re all going through something, Lucy. I’m going through something.” His grief had become manageable, an almost acceptable part of him, but that didn’t mean it had vanished. “But you’re going through something too.”

Lucy looked away, her cheeks pink.

He didn’t want just the pretty Lucy Preston, the competent Lucy Preston, the strong and put-together Lucy Preston, although he loved her strength, her fire, her knowledge. He wanted the angry, messy, furious, jagged-edged Lucy. He wanted her to be herself, even if in some moments that self was ugly.

They all had moments where they were ugly.

“Tear off the mask,” Flynn said quietly. “Your face is glorious.”

She looked up at him. “What’s that from?”

“A poem from the 17th century. _I am born of the Sun_. By Rumi. Your heart may be as cold as stone but I will warm it with my raging fire.” Flynn paused, a memory rising up in his throat. “It was my mother’s favorite poem. My father used to recite it to her. It was in his wedding vows.”

“That sounds lovely.”

“It was. They were.” Both taken too soon from him. His father before his mother, which was the cruelest of tricks, because Maria Flynn had already lost so much.

“You know, I could say the same to you,” Lucy told him. “You could… drop the sarcasm, for once. Drop the sass and the… the everything else you carry around like some kind of shield. Don’t think that I don’t notice. When was the last time you really let someone in?”

“São Paulo,” he shot back quietly. “You?”

Lucy set the book and coco aside, and for a moment he was afraid he’d overstepped, gotten too rough, shown his own jagged edges and cut her. “Every time I start to,” Lucy whispered, “they leave. Amy disappeared. My mom became this woman I could no longer… she wasn’t the mother I knew. Wyatt picked Jess–which he should have, I’m not saying he should’ve done it differently but–and then he made this big mess of it–and Rufus, we got him back but… he died.” She looked up at him. “Why would I take it off, Flynn? The mask is all anyone wants from me.”

His voice was rough, a rasp. “I don’t want anything from you except what you want to give. If that’s your mask, then fine. But I think you’ll be happier if you let yourself… be yourself. I saw you, in that bar, I saw your face. And it was… you were…”

He couldn’t say it, wasn’t even sure what it was he was going to say, and he looked away, feeling a coward.

“Were we something?” Lucy asked. He looked up. “In my journal. Were we something?”

“For a time,” he conceded. He’d held that back from her for long enough.

“What changed?”

Part of him wanted to lie. _You chose someone else. I wasn’t what you wanted._ But he owed her the truth after all he had, accidentally or not, put her through. “I died.”

Lucy looked like an invisible force had pushed her back slightly, and she stared at him with a slightly paler face. “Oh.”

“Gettysburg.” The journal didn’t go into details. It had been too painful for the other Lucy to write about. That was around the time the mantra started: _we have to go back. We have to go back. We have to go back._ Like Jack Torrance.

Lucy looked down at her hands. “Oh,” she said again.

He expected her to ask more questions, about how they got together, maybe, or about what he did when he first read the journal, but Lucy… Lucy didn’t ask him anything. Instead she carefully crawled across the couch, over her papers and books, and delicately, almost like a cat, settled herself in his lap.

Flynn felt like he was made of glass, like one touch would shatter him. “Lucy…”

“You said, what I wanted to give,” Lucy whispered.

Her lips were warm, and soft, and just a little bit demanding. And she made a very appreciative noise when he gingerly allowed his hands to settle at her waist. When she turned her head to kiss his jaw, he caught the faint scent of strawberries.

“I want to give this,” she admitted, the words sunk into the space between them.

Flynn looked up at her, at her eyes that were dark and endless as time. “May I… be permitted to give back?”

The corner of her mouth quirked upwards. “If you take off your mask.”

He at last allowed his arms to slide around her properly, settling her more firmly against him. “Deal.”

Her mouth sealed over his so quickly, he spoke half the word against her tongue.


End file.
